


in the valley of your heart

by herax



Category: Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Cave-In, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Truce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27121370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herax/pseuds/herax
Summary: When Cal is injured during a cave-in on Zeffo, BD-1 has to seek help from an unlikely source.(Or: BD-1 does not like Trilla.)
Relationships: BD-1 & Cal Kestis, Cal Kestis & Trilla Suduri | Second Sister
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	in the valley of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'collapsed building' prompt.

When she wakes up to aching ribs and a lungful of dust, Trilla decides she is going to murder whoever supervised the Zeffo dig.

Kestis had been right within her grasp, cowering behind that forcefield, when his useless little droid had done _something_. She can’t recall exactly what the fool had pressed but whatever it was, the chain reaction had ricocheted throughout the dig site, sending her, the site, and (hopefully) Kestis plummeting down into the tomb below.

Her left ankle protests when she tries to push herself to her feet and she ignites her lightsaber for a better view as she drags herself upright on her good leg. There’s no light above her, just chunks of imperial concrete that have crashed through the Zeffo foundations, and she exhales in frustration when a scan of her surroundings doesn’t reveal any clear exits.

“Command,” she calls, activating her comm. It’s only when she presses two fingers to her ear that she realises her helmet is gone, removed while presenting Kestis with the truth about Cere, and her irritation only grows stronger. “This is Second Sister. Report if you copy.”

There isn’t even static on the other end, just silence, but she tries again. “If anyone on an imperial channel can hear this, respond. A member of the Inquisitorius requires immediate extraction.”

The answering silence swamps her again but before she can call for a third and final time, she hears a quiet scrabbling from somewhere to her left.

She whips around, saber glowing red in the darkness, and it takes her a second to spot the small sprinkling of rocks being pushed out of a crevice. 

A beep of apparent exertion follows and Trilla’s eyes narrow. She supposes it had been too much to hope that he’d been horribly crushed to death by falling rocks. 

“Kestis.”

Another beep follows, this time in the negative, and Trilla blinks. 

It’s been a long time since she’s needed to understand binary — the Empire is clear on its preference for human languages — but she’s apparently retained enough from her Padawan training to get the gist.

“Kestis’ droid?” she asks, inching closer to the shifting rocks.

Still muffled by the rocks, the droid’s response sounds almost offended and Trilla rolls her eyes. 

“I don’t care what your designation is,” she snaps. “Is Kestis dead? Did the fall kill him?”

Another negative response, disappointingly, but followed by a sheepish trill. 

She smiles. “Injured then? Where-”

A larger rock dislodges before she can finish and she recoils in surprise when the small square droid propels itself free to smack her hard in the face. The lights on its faceplate are blinding and Trilla stumbles back, shielding her eyes and trying to ignore the ringing in her ears. “You little f-”

_BEEEEEEEEEEP._

She cries out, hands pressed to her ears, but reignites her saber and lunges towards the droid as soon as the shrieking stops. “I’ll-”

It skitters out of her reach, flitting up the wall of rocks and hovering there as it boops at her pointedly.

“That was for your friend?” she repeats, incredulous. “Listen, you hunk of scrap, I’m not the reason why we’re trapped down here. Do you always play with things you don’t understand or did you just pick that up from your idiot owner?”

The droid — ‘BD-1’ apparently — glares at her and lets out a sullen beep.

“The feeling is extremely mutual,” Trilla mutters. “Do you plan on explaining why you’re attacking me or do I have to wait for your processors to arrive at your one coherent thought per day?”

She doesn’t recognise the phrase that follows (but then her childhood binary lessons didn’t typically include expletives).

“Today, droid.” She reaches out with the Force as she speaks, the soothing darkness swelling inside her as she makes the rocks beneath the droid’s feet rattle. “I’d hate for you to have an accident.”

It scampers away again with a nervous squeak, careful to stay out of the reach of her lightsaber, but it does settle slightly closer to her face this time before launching into an explanation. 

Her grasp of the language isn’t strong enough to follow every detail but it’s easy enough to pick up on the salient ones: _friend, hurt, unconscious, stims, awake, escape, help_.

It’s an effort to hide her smile at the thought of driving a lightsaber through the heart of Cere’s new protégé while he’s too weak to stop her but she maintains as neutral an expression as possible when she says, “So you want me to help your friend? The same person who just tried to kill me?”

BD-1’s lights flash red as he reminds her that she tried to kill Kestis first.

She has to admit, he does have a point.

“Why would I help you?” she says with a sneer. “Kestis’ survival isn’t exactly high on my list of priorities.”

A string of noises follows, the tone somehow both hostile and patient, and Trilla purses her lips as she translates. 

“What makes you think I need help from you or your friend to escape?”

BD-1 lets out a mocking beep as he swivels his lights around the surrounding rubble. Apparently Trilla’s feigned confidence wasn’t all that convincing. 

“All right,” she allows, “say I come with you. What’s to stop you and Kestis attacking me as soon as I help you?”

BD-1 floats down in front of her face and trills at her.

The sincerity is almost pathetic, a promise that Kestis and the droid are honorable idiots who would never go back on their word, but as much as Trilla would like to carve the bot in half with her saber and leave Kestis to rot, she isn’t exactly big on alternative options.

“Fine,” she says eventually. “Where’s your master?”

A stubborn beep.

Trilla sighs. “Your _friend_ then. How do I get to him?”

BD-1 backs up, hovering by the small tunnel he crawled in through, and Trilla raises her eyebrows. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

BD-1 shakes his head and taps his foot against the entrance as Trilla limps closer. It’s wider further down than the narrow entrance would suggest, a small gap snaking through the packed rocks, and she sheathes her lightsaber and reaches out to the Force to send more of the rocks tumbling away. The rubble shakes around her, dust falling from the concrete that serves as a ceiling, but she’s glad when it doesn’t collapse any further, leaving her with a somewhat wider tunnel as an exit.

The droid swoops in, chittering about _friend_ and _help_ and _hurry_ , and Trilla thinks fondly about just killing both of them as she clambers into the tunnel after him. It’s a tight fit, crawling along on her elbows in pursuit of the blue light of the droid, and she unhooks her cloak about halfway in after getting it caught between the roof of the tunnel and her limbs one too many times. 

The dust is heavier in here, enough that she has to stop and cough every few feet, and she groans in relief when BD-1 beeps happily as he makes it to the other side.

The process of extricating herself from the tunnel isn’t the most dignified but as she staggers to her feet on the other side, she’s pleased at the absence of sarcastic commentary from the droid.

He’s focused instead on something across the small clearing and Trilla’s hand goes to her lightsaber when she sees Kestis lying in the dirt.

He’s unconscious, slumped on his side with blood trickling from a deep gash on his forehead, and he doesn’t even stir as Trilla takes two steps closer.

BD-1 beeps in what could be a threat or a warning but Trilla throws the droid back against the wall with the Force before it can intervene. 

Its noises get louder, a panicked, pleading siren in the silence of the cave, but she blocks it out as she approaches Kestis with her lightsaber blazing. 

True, she’d wanted to bring him in, to shape that chaos and tenacity into an instrument the Empire could wield, but she isn’t about to turn down an opportunity like this.

Kestis doesn’t move as she raises the lightsaber but before she can bring it down, the image changes in a blink to a cluster of small bodies lying bloodied on similar rocky ground.

The breath catches in Trilla’s throat and she blinks furiously, until she sees Kestis once again through the blur of tears rather than her slaughtered charges.

BD-1’s beeps are quieter now, but still pleading, and when Trilla steps back, she decides it’s pragmatism rather than mercy which has stayed her hand.

“We need both of us alive in order to escape, yes?” she asks the droid, who squeaks in relief when she releases him.

BD-1 nods, hopping over to Kestis and standing protectively on his chest, and Trilla sheathes the lightsaber with a sigh. 

“I hope you tell him that I could have killed him,” she says. “What do you need me to do?”

BD-1 hesitates but a small tray soon pops open on the side of his body. 

Trilla nods when she sees the tiny stim canisters inside. “You can’t administer them yourself, can you?” she says, keeping the mocking light. “Looks like droids have their limits.”

The droid boops defiantly at her but from the way he ducks his head in embarrassment, she isn’t wrong.

She crouches down, keeping her weight on her right leg and reaches for the tray. The droid’s chassis is warm to the touch and his eyes follow her with suspicion as she extracts two stim canisters. She jabs one into her own chest without hesitation, ignoring the droid’s indignant trill as the healing warmth floods through her, and sighs when the chemicals begin duping her brain into thinking her ankle is less painful that it is.

_Beep BOOP._

“I know,” she says, “I’ll do him next. I just didn’t trust you both not to leave me behind if I fell.”

BD-1 trills a dark mutter about how he hopes she’ll fall off a cliff and Trilla smirks as she reaches out with the second stim to Kestis. His dark blue clothes are ripped and stained with blood in multiple places but as she reaches out to press the stim to his ribs, she doesn’t know how many of those injuries were from the fall or were inflicted by her hands.

Kestis’ eyes snap open the instant the stim hits and he bolts up to a sitting position with a pained cry. One hand goes to his chest as he pulls in a wheezing breath and Trilla backs up as the droid floats in Kestis’ face, peppering him with anxious questions.

“I’m okay, buddy,” he says, patting the droid like it’s some kind of pet. “I’m okay, I just-” He puts a hand to his head and winces when it comes away covered in blood. “Just had a bad fall, that’s all. How did you-”

His gaze travels across the clearing and Trilla is deeply gratified by the look of sheer terror in his eyes when he catches sight of her.

“BD, look out!”

She could have run him through three separate ways in the time it takes him to scramble to his feet and ignite his lightsaber, but she just watches with a smirk as he eyes her with fear. “Trilla? What are you doing here?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Me? We’re _all_ here because your worthless droid messed around with something he shouldn’t.”

Kestis glares at her, shifting his stance to block BD-1 from her view. 

Trilla decides the dual protectiveness is slightly endearing but mostly pathetic.

BD-1 trills quickly. 

From the parts Trilla recognises — _help, stim, two, escape, no kill_ — BD-1 is recounting their agreement. She’s fairly sure she hears the droid refer to her as ‘evil triangle lady’ but she opts not to seek clarification on that point when Kestis nods and lowers his lightsaber slightly. “You’re helping us?”

“This may come as a surprise to someone who lived on Bracca,” she says icily, “but not all of us want to spend the rest of our lives in a pile of broken garbage.”

Kestis scowls. “I see the fall didn’t make you any less of an asshole.”

“Just to you,” Trilla says sweetly. “This isn’t an alliance, Padawan. This is a temporary truce that ends the second we make it out of this pit.”

“Guess we better hurry then,” he says, “before me and BD-1 decide we can manage without you.”

Trilla laughs but sheathes her lightsaber as Kestis sets his on his hip again. BD-1 launches off on another tangent that Trilla doesn’t bother to follow, and she just watches as the droid bounces from one part of a wall to another while Kestis nods.

“So through here?” he asks. “You sure?”

An affirmative whistle.

“And you think that’ll be enough to get us back up?”

Trilla has never seen a droid shrug before but that’s the only way she can describe BD-1’s response. 

If this had been her operation, she would’ve been demanding more precision — time scales, schematics, manpower estimates — but of course, Kestis just shrugs in return and follows his dumb little droid up close to the wall.

“We have to get through here,” he calls back to her. “BD-1 says two lightsabers should be enough.”

Trilla’s estimation of BD-1’s intelligence is only slightly above Kestis’ but she sighs and ignites her saber anyway as she follows him to the wall. The compulsion to run the blade through Kestis’ spine is ever-present but she resists in favour of sinking it deep into the thick concrete slab blocking their way.

Kestis hacks away next to her, the droid offering words of advice and encouragement from his shoulders, and relative silence settles over them both until Kestis opens his dumb mouth again.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

Out of breath, Trilla looks over, confused. “Which part of ‘we need two people to escape’ did you not understand?”

Kestis glowers at her and lays into the wall with more vigour. “I don’t remember the Empire being big on making deals with fugitives. In any circumstances.”

“Thankfully, the Empire is more practical than that useless Jedi Code,” Trilla says with more confidence than she feels. If word of the truce gets back to Lord Vader or the Grand Inquisitor, she isn’t certain they’ll share her view, but she has no intention of letting word get out. “Consider this a temporary stay of execution. Once we reach the surface, I’ll still be leaving your body for Cere to find.”

From the way his jaw clenches, Cere is still a raw wound, and Trilla sneaks more glances at him as she continues to pull chunks of concrete out of their path. 

He’s younger than she is, maybe even younger than she was when Cere betrayed her, but as much as she dislikes him, she has to admit he’s less green than she was back then. He’s still foolishly idealistic and far too trusting given that he’s partnered with a snake like Cere, but he’s shown a surprising amount of resilience so far and has carved through an impressive number of her troopers. He’s also survived far more punishment than she expected, bouncing back for more each time, and some dark, quiet part of Trilla aches to put that trait to use in a less wholesome context.

With the right training, he could make a formidable inquisitor.

“You could just turn yourself in, you know,” she says, sending a wedge of concrete flying. “Save Cere, save that latero friend of yours. I might even be persuaded to let your droid live if you surrender without a fight.”

Kestis shakes his head in disbelief. “And let you turn me into an inquisitor? I’ll pass, thanks. Being brainwashed into a murderer doesn’t seem like a great career choice.”

“Says the scraprat?”

He shrugs. “I’ll take Bracca over the Empire any day.”

It’s almost painful how stupid he is but Trilla tries to keep the scorn out of her voice when she says, “Regardless, it’s hardly brainwashing. We were raised by a cult of foolish old men — the Empire can help to undo some of that damage.”

Kestis grunts as he drives his blade deep into the concrete. “Sounds like what a brainwashed person would say.”

Trilla briefly fantasises about wrapping the Force around his throat until he stops breathing. However, the pleasant daydream is interrupted when she feels a sudden rush of cool air on her face. 

She and Kestis both hurry close to the wall as BD-1 lets out a triumphant beep and Kestis looks up at the droid with a grin. “Great work, buddy.” He sounds so proud of the droid when he says to Trilla, “He said there’d be a vent this way.”

“He says a lot of things,” Trilla mutters but some of the tension unfurls in her chest upon having actual proof of a way out. The concrete is weakened, wide cracks now visible, and Trilla eyes one above her as she says, “Let me try-”

BD-1’s beep is barely audible beneath the sound of Kestis’ saber igniting and she whirls on him, blade in hand. 

“We’re going first,” Kestis says firmly. “Me and BD-1. I don’t want you waiting at the top to ambush us.”

Trilla laughs. “Why wait when I can just kill you down here?”

Kestis raises a hand, clenching it into a fist, and Trilla looks up in panic when the rocks above her start to shift. “You-”

“We’re leaving,” he says. “You try to stop us and I’ll bring this whole place down on our heads.”

She stares in disbelief. “You’d kill yourselves.”

He flashes her a smile. “Maybe, but we’d kill you too. Let us go and you might still get back to the Empire alive.”

“You know I’ll find you, yes?” she snarls. “You leave chaos in your wake — it’s like following the path of a hurricane.”

“Then I guess I’ll kick your ass again the next time you find me,” he says, with a strange amount of confidence for someone Trilla has beaten twice now. “BD, let’s go.”

Trilla hesitates. She could defeat him, she knows it, especially when he’s still injured from the fall but she persuades herself that it’s the threat of being buried alive which holds her back. She wouldn’t want to deprive the Empire of a competent inquisitor, after all.

She keeps her distance, lightsaber still in hand, as Kestis and BD-1 clamber up through the concrete block, and she hears the whoosh of air and the scrape of metal against rock as the two of them are launched upward by the vent.

She waits for a second, listening for the sounds of the two of them falling to their deaths, but when nothing comes, she squeezes through the same gap in the concrete. She’s filthy, hair matted with dust and her helmet and cape lost somewhere in the ruin, but as the vent propels her upward into fresh air again, she’s very relieved to still be alive.

Her comm crackles to life before she can even land, the voice of a trooper in her ear, “Second Sister, do you read me? Please come in if you copy.”

Even with the cushion of the Force, the landing still jars her ankle, and she winces before responding, “Second Sister reporting.”

After a short delay, it’s Ninth who replies, “Glad to have you back with us. For a while, I thought the Padawan might’ve actually taken you out.”

“Please,” Trilla says. “As if I’d fall to a child playing Jedi.”

Ninth chuckles and Trilla takes a moment to scan the area for any sign of Kestis and the droid. The ground is muddied, the footprints easy to follow as they weave on and off the patches of grass, but she bites her tongue at the stab of pain that shoots up from her injured ankle. The landing may have been worse than she thought.

“Did you find him?” Ninth asks. “Should I prepare a prisoner transport for extraction?” Trilla can hear the grin in her voice when she says, “Or just a shuttle to retrieve the corpse?”

“No prisoner,” Trilla says. “No corpse either. There was a cave-in — he escaped.”

“Unlucky,” Ninth says, with a distinct lack of sincerity. “Next time, huh? Assuming the Grand Inquisitor gives you a next time, that is.”

“He will,” Trilla says firmly. “Kestis won’t escape again.”

Ninth’s hum is skeptical but Trilla ignores it as she orders, “Send a shuttle to my location. Preferably with a med-droid.”

“It’s on its way,” Ninth says. “Should I send a squad too? Any sign of the Jedi?”

Trilla’s gaze lingers on the muddy footprints for a long moment but the image of Kestis — _the younglings_ — lying bleeding on the stone flashes before her eyes again.

“No.” The lie comes far too easily but Trilla tells herself it’s just her own exhaustion motivating her, rather than any concern for Kestis’ safety. “No, he’s long gone.”


End file.
